Three Obsessions: Midnight Movies, Suddenly and Goldiggers

More obsessions and more DVDs to be released tomorrow including Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Anthony Mann's Cimarron, the Errol Flynn Western Collection and David Mamet's UFC movie, Redbelt. Also, check out Sept. 2 for the Fox noir titles Road House (a classic starring Ida Lupino, Richard Widmark and Cornel Wilde) on which I provide commentary with friend and "Czar of Noir" Eddie Muller. I also contributed to featurettes on Road House and the bizarre but beautiful Moontide (starring Lupino, Jean Gabin and Claude Rains).

As always, you can read all my DVD and Theatrical reviews at Strange Impersonation and check out whatever else I'm thinking at Pretty Poison.

As for now, Three Obsessions:

1. Midnight Movies  Only because I discussed the longstanding trend on the show Dailies for the Reelz channel. Though I briefly discussed newer pictures now being released at midnight, why movie fans like to attend the late late shows and why studios looove making money off of them, my favorites will always be the true cult movies, like Harold and Maude (which I'll be writing about soon), Showgirls or Rocky Horror (though I could never join that movie cult -- I just love the picture itself and the music -- "Science Fiction Double Feature" is a perfect, beautiful, epic song). Anyway, it all started with The Empire Strikes Back in my hometown, Seattle, but really on a larger scale, with Tim Burton's Batman -- which I talk about but was probably cut for time. There's never enough time! Dig the drunk singing The Star Wars theme...Jeeesus...I hope he's drunk.

2. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)  Even scripter Gore Vidal admits to going way over-the-top with this Tennessee Williams adaptation, but bless the man for doing so. To please the production code, he had to -- making the film's homosexual character not only an enigma, but a faceless monster, perishing at the hands of fed-up native boys. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly is another picture I watch with alarming frequency, but I can't fault myself -- the picture has it all -- Kate Hepburn at her most evil scene chomping best, perpetual fag-hag Liz Taylor donning not only the "it" bathing suit but being the "it" woman to procure young men for her chicken-hawk, native sodomizing cousin. Insane asylums, lobotomies, creepy Venus flytrap Gothic gardens, the Galapagos Islands, cannibalization! And then there's the beautiful Montgomery Clift, post accident (I happen to think he's still gorgeous -- just broken and more vulnerable) as Liz's supportive shrink (can you imagine Monty as your shrink? Wait a second...I totally can and wish he was). The movie finds the deliciously named Violet Venable (Hepburn) as a New Orleans widow unnaturally obsessed with her "poet" son Sebastian, who died while on vacation with her gorgeous niece Catherine (Taylor). I love how impeccably formal, insanely eccentric (she comes down to greet people in an elevator and has a garden filled with monstrous plants) and downright sick this woman is; her fixation on Sebastian being Oedipal with a capital O. But pretty Catherine's thoughtful shrink Monty will get to the bottom of this poisoned well leading to the movies memorable blood-curdling scream of "Help!" -- something that has invaded my dreams for years and years. Perfect hothouse Southern melodrama. I want to move there...

3. Goldiggers of 1933 (1933)  I can never get enough of this sexy, subversive picture. Though 1930’s Warner Brothers is renown for social dramas like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang or the brilliant Wild Boys of the Road (you must track this down -- an under-seen masterpiece) and classic gangster films like Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson and Public Enemy with James Cagney, they also provided some of cinema’s greatest musicals. My favorite being Gold Diggers of 1933, directed by Fugitive helmer, Mervyn LeRoy and more importantly, choreographed by that mad genius, surrealistic artist Busby Berkeley. With a take on what Americans love most -- money -- the film showcases a bizarre-o number of the famed song "We're in the Money" wherein a comely Ginger Rogers sings it in both English AND Pig Latin. (My God, how I love Ginger -- The Major and the Minor alone). Amazing for its ability to be light fluff, fantastically inventive in terms of set design and costuming and seriously relevant, Goldiggers proves that musicals aren’t mere escapism. And by the time Joan Blondell ends the film with the haunting "Remember My Forgotten Man," in which soldiers from World War I are shown in bread lines, you'll again remember that even the oldest of musicals had something to say. Absolutely sublime.

Comments

[DivaGuru]

I've never heard of Suddenly, Last Summer before now, but your hilarious description has sold me on it... I'm going to netflix it right now!

Thanks for the advice, keep it up, I love it!

http://divachickz.com - Where busy chicks come to unwind...

[Eddie]

Ah, Kim, Kim, Kim... why can't we just go back to the days of Goldiggers and Mony Clift and all that... those sad midnight movie folks debilitate me. Movies are a part of our lives, not our entire lives. Ah, well. Here's to you, doll -- hope our "thing" turned out OK.

[Theron]

I think the first midnight movie I attended was in the mid-70s. "Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii." Ahhh, those were the days. The theater was SO smokey...

Liz and Katy and Monty and Gore and Tennessee - wow.

"Sounds like dancing..."

[O.G.]

Thank you Kim for bringing Suddenly Last Summer to my attention. I rented it, and it was just as you described. A perfect rainy Sunday afternoon film.

[Richard Hourula]

Regarding obsession number 3 I can't think of an occasion when I've agreed with someone more. I love all the movies mentioned and own them on DVD, excepting Wild Boys of the Road that still awaits its long overdue DVD release.
LeRoy was a versatile and today much unsung director and Gold Diggers of 1933 was his best film, in no small part thanks to Berkeley.
Ginger's role was relatively small but crucial. It presaged the brilliance to come, including the Major and the Minor.
Love your blog, you must check out mine sometime. I think you've inspired my next post.

[Terry]

I loved "Last Summer"...a favorite movie from my ultra-twisted childhood. Gay movies were just sorta better in the good old days of repression.

[Nathan Cone]

I love Gold Diggers of 1933... I went into it blind, not knowing anything excepting the famous opening sequence... and found it a very funny movie, while also constantly referencing the "real world" outside the movie theater. I was floored that the Forgotten Man number closes the picture.

My favorite line (as I remember it) from Gold Diggers of 1933:

Girl 1 (I forget the names): "What's the show about?"

Ned Sparks: "The Depression."

Girl 2: "Well, we won't have to rehearse that!"

[C. Jerry]

Joe Mankiewicz was the wrong director for Suddenly Last Summer. Can you imagine if Joseph Losey had done it? With the same cast? In color?

[JJ]

"Wild Boys" IS a masterpeice--the epitome of great Warner Bros. Pre-Code filmmaking. I first heard of it thru Martin Scorcese's "Journey Through American Film" doc.--then was lucky enough to see it projected at the Harvard Film Archive. It ROCKS. PLEASE, Warners, where is our DVD with a Scorcese commentary and accompanying William Wellman bio?

Maybe it's time for a long overdue "Wild Bill Wellman" collection a la the Busby Berkely set.

[Steve-O]

The photo of Liz Taylor is painfully hot. I'll never forget seeing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the first time and seeing her and Newman looking their best. Were there ever two better looking people? Age and illness age the rest of us but some remain timeless in our fat heads.